Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/20

 pockets grasping the snub-nosed automatics that he knew so well. While the left hand blasted the closing circle of the Watchers into pulpy fragments, the right hand was pouring a steady stream of explosive pellets into the belly of the craft above. With such stunning speed had he acted that it was not the fifth part of a second before the grey circle around them had been broken wide open and the ship above was heeling over sickly with a gaping, shattered wound in its hull.

"Come on!" spat Maclure to the Amters. And in another fifth of a second they were in the ship and tearing wildly over the grey plain. "It'll take them ten minutes at least to get going with what I did to them. Make tracks! In ten minutes we land and get to work!"

BOUT them rose the gigantic rpos of the super-spacer that Angel Maclure had undertaken to build. Nervously he glanced at his watch to confirm his own acute time-sense. "Three hours since we landed," he complained. "Can't you put some steam into it?"

"They're doing their best," said Jackson. "We aren't all supermen, y' know. About this statistics business here—how do you arrive at these coordinates?"

"Never mind," snapped Angel. "If Maclure says it's right you can bet your boots on it. We haven't time to check."

"Then that finishes the calculations," yawned Jackson. "By your own words the Dead Center should rise from some unidentified spot in this damn plain some minutes hence."

"Right. And what it'll look like and how we'll know we've found it is only one of the things I don't know. That's where Mr. Sapphire has the lead on us again. He's hand-in-glove with the Watchers, and if any race is expert on the Center they must be. Suppose you turn your mind to the psychological problem of what in Hades these Watchers expect to get out of all this."

"Evil, I think," said Jackson slowly. "Nothing but their unalloyed instinct for mischief and destruction. You may find it hard to understand that line of thinking; I, being of the same basic stock as the Morlens do not They are a shallow example of that perfection toward which the Watchers strive. This is a very strange land, Angel."

"I know that," snapped Maclure. 'And I don't like it one bit more than I have to. The sooner we get our work done and well done, I'm n aking tracks And the Center, once I've fixed Mr. Sapphire, can go plumb to hell and gone." He stared at the ship which was reaching completion. "Get that on!" he roared as a crew of three gingerly swung his original power-unit into place.

Jackson smiled quietly. "How much longer?" he asked.

"Dunno," said Angel. "But that's the last plate. Quite a hull we have there—what with transmutation and things. I didn't think it'd work with the elements of this world, but why not? Good job, anyway. Thousand yards from stem to stem, fifty yards from keel to truck. I don't see how they can crack her." But his face showed lines of worry.

"What's eating you?" asked Jack-son.

"Mr. Sapphire," exploded Angel. "Always a jump ahead of us every-where we turn—what do you make of it? How can we be sure there isn't a catch to the whole business?"

"I know the feeling," said Jacksen. "Hey!" he yelled suddenly,